Garrett Wilson

Daniel and the Lions' Den

December 21, 2011 at 04:23 pm

A few months ago I posted an image that was an idea for a Bible project I was doing this semester. After quite a bit of work, I have finished the project. Below is the final image (scaled down to 50%) created using Blender (tree, cloud, grass, den) and Gimp (final composite).

The goal of this project was to try to come up with a image that showed what the Lions' Den that Daniel was thrown into potentially looked like. Thus, I did research.

Lions

Asiatic [7]

Hunted by kings for sport [8,9]

Den

It was a pit in a hill. [2]

Square [2,4]

Partitioned in two [2,4]

Had a side entrance [2,4], which makes sense if hunted by a king [8,9]

Has a top entrance [2,4]

Top entrance has wall 1.5 yards high [2]

Was probably sloped from the top entrance (Daniel survived being cast in) [4]

Lions might have had perches on the slope [4]

Vegetation

Oaks, Pines, Terebinths, Grasses, Barley, Wheat [10]

Soil (I could only find information about Mediterranean soil.)

Has at least two layers [11/12]

The top layer is darker than the lower layer [11/12]

My Interpretations

No Daniel? I have no idea what Daniel looks like. I know he is about 80 [1], but that's it.

Only one lion? If I didn't have Daniel, then this wasn't when Daniel was thrown into the lion's den. There were at times more than one lion in the den, but since the king kept them there to hunt [8,9] there would also be times when there weren't a lot of lions.

Stones? I presume there were stones around since Daniel 6:17 [3] says a stone was placed over the mouth of the den.

I designed this to require the least amount of digging possible. There are two openings because this is the least number you need to have access to both compartments. It is located by a cliff since if there was a cliff, it would require less effort than digging into the rounded hill, and I've seen photos [13] that show cliffs in Iraq.